In the second of our episodes with Tom Hardcastle, Yiuwin Tsang from the Beautiful Business team finds out how Tom finds, attracts and keeps the right team members at Ninety. Learn how culture and value alignment are at the front and centre of his success, be it in the onboarding of new recruits or when organising intentional team away days.
Tom is a Senior Partner at social enterprise, Ninety. Ninety are innovation experts in the insurance sector. Their clients include Bupa, Direct Line, Generali, Lloyd’s and Zurich and 90% of their distributable profits go to charity.
In the second of our episodes with Tom Hardcastle, Yiuwin Tsang from the Beautiful Business team finds out how Tom finds, attracts and keeps the right team members at Ninety. Learn how culture and value alignment are at the front and centre of his success, be it in the onboarding of new recruits or when organising intentional team away days.
Tom is a Senior Partner at social enterprise, Ninety. Ninety are innovation experts in the insurance sector. Their clients include Bupa, Direct Line, Generali, Lloyd’s and Zurich and 90% of their distributable profits go to charity.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Beautiful Business podcast. My name is Yiuwin Tsang. And in this episode, I got the chance to speak with Tom Hardcastle. Tom is a senior partner at a social enterprise, Ninety who are innovation experts in the insurance sector. Their clients include Bupa, Direct Line, Generali, Lloyds and Zurich. 90% of their distributable profits go to charity. Tom has a strong background in financial services, fulfilling strategy, change, operational and PNL roles, as well as playing a leading role in the transformation of Co-op Insurance as part of the executive team. He holds a masters from the University of St. Andrews and an MBA from Manchester Business School. Ninety believe insurance is fundamentally a force for social good. They also believe in the power of innovation and customer centred change. Their vision is to help insurers innovate and thrive so that they are well equipped to serve and stabilise a fast changing world. I hope you enjoy our conversation. So let's start with thinking about purpose and thinking about impact. I know that Ninety donates like 90% of your distributable profits to good causes. 10% obviously comes back to the rest of the team within the business if that's right. That's pretty serious number. You know, those are pretty eyeopening numbers, and I'm really interested to hear how you ensure that level of funds creates the most impact as possible cause that's a big undertaking by you, by your team, by your shareholders to put that amount of, you know, the value that you create back into good causes. And so how do you measure it? How do you make sure it's creating the most impact?
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah, sure. So the way we are structured, there is a foundation called the Ninety Foundation, which sit alongside the business. So my day to day activities and most of the team is actually about generating that profit through the work that we do with insurance companies to help them innovate and thrive. Increasingly, we may come back to this, part of what we are doing directly is looking to move into spaces that can benefit more people and those that might have needs that haven't been met to date, but in terms of how we deal with the 90% piece, the Ninety Foundation oversees the charities and partners that we donate to and their role is to screen potential candidates for the profits to be distributed to and we have particular themes all around self-help rather than donations for donations sake and particularly around education, health, sanitation. So we've got some themes then that we focus on for the donations. We have a foundation that then oversees the relationships with those charities. And then what we look to do is measure, in particular, impact as a result of that funding and impact for us means lives that have been impacted positively, whether it's number of school, children that now have access to reading materials and books so that they can have a fulfilling education, or whether it's helping to fund a maternity ward at a hospital as we've done outside of Nairobi in Kenya and understanding how many lives have we been able to support there. So the hard, if you like, cold numbers in terms of currency numbers, that we donate our importance in one sense, but for us far more important is to turn that into the number of people and lives that we can impact.
Yiuwin Tsang:That's really interesting. Cause we we've had a number of really interesting discussions with different people that work in this space or certainly work within that kind of impact space and one of the common themes that would be coming out on is around that, you know, looking beyond just those cold, hard metrics as you kind of put it and not just looking at, you know, the pound signs and looking at, you know, what kind of impact that investment actually has. So with the foundation, how deep does it go when you're talking, you know, different partners and looking at it. Talk us through that kind of relationship, talk us through that measurement piece and how you see it. I guess there'll be a stage where you're almost planning or forecasting, what kind of impact it can have and that would perhaps come out with some of those softer metrics, those intangibles, perhaps. And then I guess it goes into the delivery part and actually measuring those and recording those so talk through that process.
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah. So part of what we do, I should of said this upfront actually is alongside the Ninety foundation, having, if you like the ultimate say, on which of those charities and other partners, we will donate to, we engage both our colleagues and also the clients that we work with when it comes to identifying either particular themes or particular organisations to work with and so we go through a process each year. So we run a calendar year and as we come to the end of each year, we understand, well, what are our distributable profits for this year? And what we also do is engage with those clients that we've worked with over the previous 12 months to say you know, you've been one of our clients this year, you know, the model we have as Ninety here's a shortlisted, or if you like filtered or approved list of potential charity partners that we can work with and donate to directly from the profits that we've created from working with yourselves. And so in that way, we involve clients in particular themes or topics that might be pertinent to them either personally, for those sponsors that we are working with or their organisations more broadly, and to bring it to life so for instance, we worked with health insurers like Bupa. What we tend to do there is link directly with particular health projects, because there is a very nice narrative and a circularity around that, for example, and then our colleagues are also involved in the process as well. So at any point in the year, they can nominate charities or partners that they think might be interesting and fit with some of those macro themes that we've talked about and then it's the role of the foundation to then take all of that, identify that list for the current year and any new entrance, as well as actually some of the relationships that we wanted to maintain into the medium term where we're actually building on donations made in previous years as well.
Yiuwin Tsang:That's really interesting. There's also this piece, I think, around building a mandate to do this type of work and this inclusion of your clients and of your team and team members and people within the organisation as well. Because I guess with that piece that 90% of the distributed profits are going outside as it were having that level of engagement is, must be really important, but I imagine certainly on an internal perspective, but from that external perspective, those clients, those partners are involved. I imagine it only strengthens those relationships and builds that engagement. And again, it's really interesting, you mention Bupa is one of those things around the initiatives that they get involved in around health and it seems to me like one of those examples where by doing the right thing, the commercial value manifests anyway, almost as a byproduct, by Bupa supporting these initiatives, by being seen there, by doing the right thing, they will build customer trust. They'll build loyalty, they'll build more business. Do you find that's the case?
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah, so I think we definitely believe that the reason clients engages in the first instance is because, well, we hope is because of the quality of work that we do and the impact that it can have for them usually, you know, from a commercial perspective or from a capability perspective. But what we also find is that these organisations, if they're looking at us some, you know, potential competitors for pieces of work, hearing that we are Ninety and the model that we have as a social enterprise and community interest company, Then, if we're on par with others, this can be the thing that can help to sway the decision and what we find is more than that, actually the strength of relationships and the repeatability of work and engagements comes off the back of quality delivery. Yes. But also this point about where those profits have gone. And so for client sponsors that have been through that process, you know, once, twice more, that just really helps to cement and firm that relationship up even further and perhaps there's something about because they can directly see that happening and they play a part in the process they're realising this isn't some kind of greenwash or social wash that we've put across what we do that it is genuine and that we will update them on the impact that that is having.
Yiuwin Tsang:That must be a much requested part I suppose of the partnerships is having the reporting, having the impact, the measurements of the impact report back to then from a client's perspective. So that not only, I guess it's not just that feel good factor. Oh, we've helped open up more schools or these different maternity wards around the world, but actual CSR reporting are you finding that's coming through more from clients? Is that a key differentiator for you, as you say, if your delivers on a par then does that add to, I suppose, the value that you create for your clients?
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah. So there's certain clients think of Zurich as one who their procurement strategy is actually to have a certain proportion of the partners that they work with come from a social enterprise or other type of construct, which is part of their broader CSR agenda so that's actually engaging the type of organisations that they look to partner with and so we're more than happy to help them fulfill their quota there, I think what's still maturing and growing then is some of that ongoing reporting. We are as an organisation and the foundation is as well, but also understanding what Ninety's about, and then that growing interest and perhaps over time then to actually get more detailed or more specific updates on where that impact is at and the benefits that that's had. But it's certainly something which can be seen as added value in the broader service of what we provide. We also, and this is back to the colleagues partner, each of our colleagues with a particular charity partner that the foundation has. So as well as bringing clients closer to the experience each of us across the team has a charity partner that we look to engage with at a slightly deeper level and then we can bring those updates both to internal Ninety sessions, but also update clients as and when we're working with them on particular projects, we can go into a bit more detail on that as well. So that's a helpful way of doing some twining there and making it more personal than perhaps it otherwise might be.
Yiuwin Tsang:That kind of brings us into the next question. So having somebody working really closely with your charity partners it sounds like there's just real strengthening of that relationship there, there's good kind of transparency. There's good kind of visibility, I suppose, within that organisation as well, which can only come about if you do have that, I suppose accountability on a colleague level to know that this is my charity partner, or this is the charity partner I'm working with and really get to know them, really get to understand them. Because that, I guess will enable you as a team to leverage that impact. You know, where I suppose again, it comes back to that piece where you said right over the top there just putting, you know, a pound sign followed by some numbers doesn't really give you the whole story and also it becomes quite limited by itself. Whereas if you know that you can bring in, you know, certain expertise or certain skills to apply to a certain area of need then it becomes all the more powerful. So what kind of leveraging of this sort have you seen through Ninety that creates a greater level of impact.
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah. So we've seen certainly from a communication and engagement perspective, a couple of things that we do. The first is that we hold impact teas. So very British afternoon tea. And this is for colleagues. We'd started actually when the first lockdown hit and the intention with that then is that we can come together with one of the charity partners and we can have both an introduction from one of our colleagues to this charity partner, but then we also hear firsthand about the impact. So that's a great way for colleagues to hear with real life stories about what the efforts each day that we are doing as Ninety can have a direct impact, not just on our clients, but on a whole wider part of society. And the other thing that we do or used to do they're coming back are having impact dinners for clients where we would bring together say a dozen clients and often included some potential clients. And the charity partner and over the course of an evening over dinner, here's some of the stories to really bring to life some of the impact that our work with these charity partners is having, and also enable just broader conversation across the table, say between clients and some of our Ninety colleagues and the charity partner, which just goes a bit deeper than perhaps sending out a report or a newsletter on this topic so we've found that, you know, it's in the title, but very impactful in and of itself as well.
Yiuwin Tsang:I guess it's comes back to that human connection in many senses, I suppose. obviously I haven't been to any of these impact teas or impact dinners, but it says to me a lot that in order to articulate the impact that you're having and really to inspire others, it's having those human stories and having those stories told and as you say, I think the challenge you have with the reports is it can often be very two dimensional, you know, quite flat and so often it is around the human story element that kind of comes through. It's how it's being communicated. And do you find that with these impact teas and also with these dinners as well, do you find that there's a propagation of ideas of, you know of inspiration of ideas, if you like, because I imagine in those types of environments, that's where you're gonna get the little spark of something that maybe didn't work over there, but it could work really well over here and so on and so forth.
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah. So absolutely both at a colleague level and a client level, I suppose it does lead into one of the themes that I've mentioned earlier on, which is increasingly as Ninety we are looking to support those unmet needs or those new risks that are emerging in the market. So whether that be microinsurance for those that currently don't have a level of cover in the developing world for everyday things that perhaps those in Western society have ready access to. Those types of things are being sparked and created even better circularity of if you like ultimate purpose of Ninety, but also us helping to support the risk industry to better identify and manage new risks. In the Western world we talk about this protection gap. It's a very small sliver compared to a global view, but actually the protection gap globally for those in developing countries is so much more significant and at the moment there aren't the range of products and services developed to support that. So those are areas that we're looking to develop solutions for, so where it might be microinsurance in the health space, for example, and to give better access to health and care, and for those that can't afford this in that space all refugees and migrants where economic migrants and some of the challenges about having some of the right cover and support in place for them as they look to engage economically in the new communities they're part of. These are now live projects for us working with insurance partners and others and it starts to get us closer to the end desires of Ninety you know, which is ultimately to help to alleviate global poverty and to do it in a very direct way with the work that we do, as well as our giving through the foundation.
Yiuwin Tsang:That's really cool, Tom and really inspirational. If I hear you, right. I like that, you know, that protection gap, I think it's an analogy that's used a lot ,there are opportunity gaps, you know, and one thing that, try my best to remind myself of is just how privileged we are to work in the economy that we work in, in the country that we work in with the environments and the protections that we have starting up a business in the UK, particularly relatively straightforward, you can give it a go there's help and the support and the things like that that are out there. I imagine starting your business in other parts of the world might be, you know, infinitely more challenging. And there are further barriers put in the way of doing that and through things like, a lack of insurance or products and insurance. So it's really just that 30 seconds of us chatting has really changed my perception of the insurance industries in terms of what they are there for cause they really could be an enabler. It could very much be the way of empowering change around the world. I guess it's linked into, you mentioned that whole kind of like the Western side of things, but it is building or bridging that gap between the circumstances for entrepreneurship, for education, for healthcare and that disparity between, you know, different cultures, different parts of the world.
Tom Hardcastle:Absolutely and we certainly as Ninety think of it from that perspective, I would say that some clients, you know, some insurance partners do and other partners, some are actually looking at the self-interest in it. And we don't necessarily see that's a bad thing because if they bring their expertise to the table and in particular, if they can bring a way to commercialise these opportunities, then we see that that can be enduring and sustainable rather than this is something that is not commercial and will, you know, fall over after 12, 18 months, two years. So we recognise what we look to do is bring the right stakeholders together. We recognise there might be some different motivating factors. Ultimately, if we can steer it in the direction, which is about meeting those, you know, serious unmet needs then we see that as a positive. And the fact, as I say, it can be commercially enduring and actually opens up new markets or markets that are not yet mature alongside Western markets, which increasingly are facing aging populations declining overall population size then actually articulating this to partners is actually there's new vibrant markets here that need support and help. Let's see what we can do in those spaces. Then just a level of reframing actually helps to point to the opportunity there.
Yiuwin Tsang:Ironically, because we're talking about insurance, which is naturally, I suppose, kind of risk averse. It is about almost opening up some eyes on the opportunities that exist further afield, which are, which are different which are new and outside of comfort zones, I suppose, and often the way to, I suppose, get people's imagination and get people buy in is through that commercial justification part. It's that it's that whole kind of risk and reward, I suppose, payoff through it, which really flies in the face a little bit about that whole purpose and then profit will follow, but ultimately ends up like an equalisation of opportunity, it brings investment through, it brings, you know more players who otherwise wouldn't be in that space who perhaps wouldn't look in that area geographically or cultured or societally and brings 'em to the table.
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah. Our tagline is, you know, innovate, thrive. Otherwise the reverse will be true. So we act as agitators in our sector and we challenge them to say, you know, if you have status, if you have the status quo, you are actually going backwards. And that is a bigger risk to you than actually taking some measured or experimental actions that move you and actually it's about how you do innovate, how you do develop opportunities and actually you can, de-risk the whole process in the way that you tackle it. But overall we see it's positive to have action and to embrace opportunities rather than to flee from them.
Yiuwin Tsang:No, indeed, and so in terms of that leveraging in terms of skills and expertise, have you seen any interesting examples of partners or clients who have used their expertise to increase the impact of a particular project or initiative?
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah. So at this stage with the foundation A lot of what we are doing is partnering with those foundations, but we've not yet squared the circle to bring our, if you like clients and partners to those particular tables. Although I think that time's coming but I can share examples that we've been involved in as Ninety, so an example that's involved, the Lloyd's market and a number of specialty carriers has actually been in the vaccine space. And this was developed as a as a service pre the COVID pandemic that we've been ensuring for the last couple of years. And it was all about the efficacy of medicines and, and their last part of transportation to where they're actually needed, which particularly impacts the developing world and it's often the lack of transport storage refrigeration that actually means the quality of what arrives and therefore the impact of the medicine or whether it can be used is severely impacted a result of that. And so the whole project was about ensuring that vaccines got to the right place in the right state and what is now in place in the market is a provision and insurances, so to manage all of those logistics and that service so that what's in intended and what's created by the pharmaceutical companies, has the desired results for those individuals. So that was something where Ninety played a small part to help create that, it was not something that was if you like directly foundational in that sense, but it's something that has, you know, in that broader context and that macro view, the desired effect that Ninety would want to be involved in any form.
Yiuwin Tsang:That's fantastic and again, super interesting, interesting that you guys were involved in that before the pandemic and does bring into the really sharp focus, the need for this type of innovation and the need to bring the best minds if you like into these sorts of spaces and have people thinking about how they can solve these challenges. I suppose anything be insurance or financial products or technology products will enable that they'll empower that to happen is only a good thing. To me, it's really clear that purpose and impact is really important to you personally, Tom. And so can you maybe just tell us, you know why is that and how does that translate into your role at Ninety? Sure. So I think by circumstance over time, I've ended up working for more purpose driven organisations. Over time, I started my career in utilities, so particularly water, electricity. You would say they are necessities in one sense. So everything has value. I then spent a number of years at The Coop G roup. Coop Group being the largest single cooperative in the world. And that cooperative model of one member, one vote, your share of profits is dependent on how much business or trade you do with that organisation rather being an outside shareholder that might not trade or engage with that organisation at all, that model worked really well in my mind and this community orientation as well, UK focused, but this orientation on providing food and other services to localities all across the UK, you know, whether that's the Shetlands Isles, the Outer Hebrides that perhaps some other retailers would think it doesn't make economic sense for us to do that. So there's something with purpose there. And then with Ninety, as I was transitioning through my career, I was quite keen to engage in consulting in a meaningful way, and to have that as part of the repertoire of what I'd experienced. So to actually find an organisation like Ninety that had that consulting backdrop was working in the sector that I had worked in myself, but actually had this purpose to, it was just, yeah, fantastic from my perspective. And certainly in the consulting field, quite, you know, rare as hen's teeth in terms of that as a model versus the perhaps more usual models in that space, so that was definitely an attraction for me in terms of moving towards, and I think as we were talking about earlier the fact that you can deliver as high quality, if not higher quality work, than any other a competitor, and we do it on a commercial, you know, for profit basis and we're able to take those profits and do something more impactful with them as a result of what we've talked about before it just felt really strong and compelling for me personally. And also means day in, day out, whether it's, you know, a good and joyful day or a difficult and hard day, there is that ultimate purpose that sits underneath it. We work for this sector to help it innovate and thrive as I say, but with the proceeds we look to help to alleviate global poverty. And so for me personally, it strikes very well with my personal value set. And then as we've recruited and grown the team, it is interesting how there is a harmony and a bond that is created because of those underlying values that actually, you know, when we are recruiting people self-select and move towards this type of organization and this type of value set. So without it being overly curated in that space, that's how it's happened and that's how it's developed. And I, I think there's a fundamental bond across the team because there is that United purpose that sits underneath it. What about your role then Tom, within Ninety? What is it you do?
Tom Hardcastle:So I'm one of the partners at Ninety and I'm also one of the directors that oversee the business. Day to day, my activities span from supporting our internal teams with developing propositions, overseeing live deliveries and activities that we have, and a lot of business development activity, which is engaging with both new and existing clients in order to further those relationships. So in those conversations, any of them, actually the underlying values and purpose of what we stand for. I hope or look to shine through. And because it's so relational, the opportunity to talk about what we are doing, why we're doing it, to get individual thoughts and reflections from clients and colleagues is really powerful and does play out a lot in that space. And then I think that's with my partner hat on, and then as being part of the management team, as director of the organisation, the opportunity for us to you know, set our targets, to understand where we want to be at points in time. Also engaging with the foundation to understand where we're at, where the opportunities lie and then another dimension I've not mentioned, which is we have an ethics board that actually oversees the way we operate. Primarily for us as a management team, but also for the wider colleague base to say, are we holding true to the value set and what we say we espouse both with our colleagues and with our clients, and then also to make the link with the foundation to say that this is an appropriate level of distributable profit to be able to center the foundation in order to support the activity there. So we look to have a level of transparency in what we do, and then also a level of governance that holds us accountable for, for what we say we're about. Brilliant, good stuff.
Yiuwin Tsang:A big thank you to Tom Hardcastle for sharing his insights and experience on how innovation in the insurance sector and beyond can create good in the world. Hello and welcome to the Beautiful Business Podcast. Beautiful business is a community for leaders who believe there's a better way of doing business. We believe beautiful businesses are led with purpose by people who care, guided by a clear strategy, and so legal. Hello and welcome to this week's edition of the Beautiful Business Podcast. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Beautiful Business podcast. My name is Yiuwin Tsang. And in this episode, I got the chance to speak with Tom Hardcastle. Tom is a senior partner at a social enterprise, Ninety who are innovation experts in the insurance sector. Their clients include Bupa, Direct Line, Generali, Lloyds and Zurich. 90% of their distributable profits go to charity. Tom has a strong background in financial services, fulfilling strategy, change, operational and PNL roles, as well as playing a leading role in the transformation of Co-op Insurance as part of the executive team. He holds a masters from the University of St. Andrews and an MBA from Manchester Business School. Ninety believe insurance is fundamentally a force for social good. They also believe in the power of innovation and customer centred change. Their vision is to help insurers innovate and thrive so that they are well equipped to serve and stabilise a fast changing world. I hope you enjoy our conversation. So running any business in this day and age, one of the biggest challenges is finding and attracting talent. That challenges is old as the hills. And with Ninety been built around this concept of donating to charity- 90% of the distributable profit. To me, it really sets out that stall of what culture to expect, certainly from outside looking in and, I'm interested to know there's a couple of things in this question really is what do you do to make sure that you and the team live those values and I think you mentioned you've got your ethics board as well, so it would be good to explore that a little bit more. But the other part, I think is just understanding what checks and balances do you have to have in place to keep this culture aligned, to try and keep the behaviours aligned within the team.
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah. So about a year or two years ago there was some work done by the team as it existed at that point to actually codify the culture. We're boutique, we're still growing, so it was perhaps something that was quite unusual for an organisation that size to do. But in that we put together a set of five values, which include others first, do the right things, smile and laugh often, but also some colour and context to what Ninety was about and also what good looks like within the organisation and what to expect. That's been a great way of if you like writing it down and codifying it. So that gives everyone that common view of what it is, we keep the cohesion as a team. We have weekly standups at a company level, as well as different specific team standups and each week, we encourage each colleague to nominate another colleague for a shout out aligned with one of the values. That way we keep the values current, but we also then bring recent examples, you know, within the week, examples of what colleagues may have done. So that's a nice and relatively easy way to keep that moving. We also have team days, so every couple of months we'll come together and have team planning days. They are totally focused on us internally as a team. There are n't client project activities on those days, there aren't conversations about clients and business development, where the links needed to be made it is, but it's actually all about internal team, building that cohesion, building those relationships and getting cross and collaborative working across the different business units within Ninety. There's been a real conscious prioritisation on that, particularly since pandemic and increase in remote working so that when we do come together, there's real intentionality behind it. And we're very much focusing on the team for that. And so that I think gives the team a backdrop as to what we're about, what to expect and how our values work. What we've also recently done cause we've had quite an influx of new people as well is have a particular intervention for line managers to talk about the dos and don'ts of line management and also Ninety approaches to particular scenarios as they come up because we need to get the balance in the sense that we want it to be a fun and energising place to work, but we also need to be able to deal with some of the challenges that may arise from time to time. And so articulating the Ninety way of doing things plays out through that. Where we have particular situations or challenges either with colleagues or clients that we as a management team need to deal with is quite rare. This cuz normally our team's very much an empowered team and can do, but where there are particular tricky challenges, then that's where we both engage management team. But it's also whether we can reach out to the ethics board as well. We have different expertise around that table from a finance, HR, and other perspective.. And so if we are facing scenarios where there are some different options, we could always put our recommended option, but we can always get a view from that ethics board on them. And in that way feel we are operating in a live way with that ethics board, as well as that formal end of year review that we do with them each year. So a number of different interventions to keep the culture alive. And I think the bottom line is we say, well, this is the value set of Ninety but we actually want each of the team to be the best that they can with their own personality and their own style. So what I quite like is that we are not a sheep dip type organisation in that sense, we want the personalities to thrive. And if you like, there isn't one flavour of Ninety, everyone's got their own personal flavour.
Yiuwin Tsang:Nice. I like the way that you've built in almost like the celebration of your values into the day to day regular don't wanna say routine, but it just feels like it's normal. One of the favourite phrases I was taught when I was in learning to manage a team was don't always catch people, doing things wrong, catch people, doing things right. And things like living to your values and sharing others or promoting others before yourself and things like this. It's just really nice to make that normal and we talk about some of the interviews that we've done for Beautiful Business around businesses always traditionally reported on things like market share, on profit, on margin, on things like this and to start applying KPIs to your societal impact to how you're reducing your carbon footprint so on and so forth. So it's still doing the things that we're used to doing, but it's just widening that metric out. And I think that can apply in culture as well. You know? So not just looking at how productive you've been, how many hours have you done? How many deals have you closed, but also looking at, as you say, how often have you celebrated your colleagues? How often have you done something which really does showcase our values and what we're abouts as an organisation, cuz again, you'll have experienced this as you've grown your teams, but the culture of an organisation is under attack all of the time, a new client is on the table, there's a big pile of money on the table. Do you take it, but compromise on some of your values because they're asking you to work in this particular space or in a particular way. And your culture is affected by the people that you bring through as well. So, having these strategies, these tactics these techniques and how you bring out those key values is really interesting and it's really interesting to see how that comes through. And I love the team days as well. I think it's so easy for organisations to talk about the operational stuff in these team get togethers and these away days, or whatever you wanna call them, you end up just talking about the work rather than talking about the business, which I guess is where the value really comes from from these sorts of days.
Tom Hardcastle:Absolutely. So it is, and yeah, I appreciate it. I think all of the team does that the focus and attention is on us collectively because we need to be in a strong place and we need to have cohesion in order to deliver the best results for clients. And then in order to be able to generate those profits. So we always need to start with ourselves and make sure that's in a strong place, as I say, we've had quite a number of new joiners this year and we've wanted to make sure absolutely they bring their personality, but they also get a sense that this is what Ninety's about so that they can feel very much a part of it. So it's very intent ional and those days are the ones where we do prioritise ourselves. And there are the other days of the week to prioritise the client.
Yiuwin Tsang:Totally. I love the Ninety way of doing things, this roadmap, this plan if you like, of how to deal with certain situations or I suppose it's almost like a standard operating procedures manual almost, which is a really boring way of putting it. However again, I'm sure you'll know better than I do Tom when it comes to onboarding new teammates and new colleagues in terms of the, I suppose, the operational drag of a new starter is that your overall productivity dips, because you having to do a bit more handholding, you're having to do a bit more coaching and mentoring stuff, and that all of that stuff will continue, but there comes a point when your investment pays off and the new starter is, if they're a salesperson they go from being cash negative to being a cash generator, or if the operationally they're start to add value and increase capacity or whatever it might be and I suppose the magic happens when you are able to reduce that wrap, when you're able to shorten that timescale from when they're properly wet behind the ears through to, working autonomously and really creating value within that organisation. So if you're able to crunch that time down by having that way of doing things that must really help.
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah, it does. And so the onboarding is very intentional as well. And as part of it, it gets scheduled so that a new starter will meet every single person in the team for at least a half hour, one to one session. As you said, there's an investment of time and effort there, but it just means they are up to speed so much more quickly, and they can reach out, engage with whomever across the team, because there is the start of rapport and a relationship because it's been very much planned in from the outset. We definitely believe that's a worthwhile investment. And we talk about collaboration across the team. You can only collaborate if you know, what people's different skillsets are and how they operate to understand where they can fit into that. I'm sure there are improvements that we can make to it, but we've taken some really good strides there to make sure that everyone has a strong onboarding experience and they get that range of introductions right from the off.
Yiuwin Tsang:As you say, it's that human bit isn't, it's much easier knock on somebody's door or ping somebody on Teams or whatever it might be if you have said hello to them, if you had had that initial half an hour with them and you know what they're really good at and where they can help you, it builds that efficiency up within that organisation and certainly post pandemic as well, super important as well, remote teams and that they don't lose that. It sounds really cold and calculated, but there's that level of productivity within the organisation and that efficiency if you can say five minutes on a call or finding who to call all those five minutes, add up over the week, over the month, over the year. And that, again, just returns that value back to the organisation, back to your charity partners. You mentioned that growing quite quickly. You've taken some new people on board. What's your approach to recruitment in terms of finding that right cultural fit? How do you go about recruiting people? What's your process there, Tom?
Tom Hardcastle:We recruit for different types of roles. I'm talking here from a technical skill set perspective. So we have traders for the training parts of our business. We've got those that are innovation consultants or engagement leads to run our projects and then we have our operational support colleagues as well. So there are different roles that we'll recruit for from a technical perspective, but what we do in those role profiles when we're advertising roles, is be very overt about the type of organisation we are and what we stand for. So what we try and do is give as much of a look and feel of that from those initial job descriptions or role profiles or any introductions to the organisation. So that for those who are weighing up a potential opportunity, they've got as much colour and context in order to make an informed decision about whether to apply or not. And then when we go into the process, we make sure that the conversation is as focused on culture fit mindset, as it is on the technical skills and so what we'll tend to do is have different roles for the interviewers that are quite deliberate on that, so that there is someone actually looking at this candidate from a culture and values fit perspective. And then another looking at it from a technical fit perspective against the role. And when we do the reviews or if they're moving to a next stage interview, those decisions will be made on the combination of those things. Clearly, we can't have someone who's culturally and values aligned, but actually there isn't a role fit from a technical competence, but also vice versa and it tends to be that we'll get the technical fit that we'll want, but it will not always be the culture and values fit. And so we put equal sway on those two things and say, we have different roles in each stage of the interview to make sure that is covered in the right way and what each of us is actually listening for and looking out for there.
Yiuwin Tsang:That's a really clever tactic. And it's difficult, very difficult to do if it's just a one person interviewer, I suppose, to be able to assess in both ways whereas if you've got two or more, I suppose, without intimidating the candidate it's a good way of doing it and having specific lookout for the different bits there. It reminds me of a saying that I picked up from doing event years and years ago, where a really successful entrepreneur said sometimes it's better to have a hole than an asshole and it's so true and that again comes back to the whole cultural part. If you don't align in terms of values, in terms of the culture, then it can be really damaging to an organisation and to esteem.
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah, no completely, the time and investment we believe is absolutely worthwhile, different way of putting it is that it only takes one bad apple and it can really impact the barrel. So we are just very aware of that and so alert to it.
Yiuwin Tsang:Good stuff. And in terms of having such strong cultural values and purpose at the core of Ninety, what's that like in a leadership capacity in your dual aspects of your leadership role in the organisation cause I sense a real deep sense of pride but also sense quite a lot of responsibility as well. So my question Tom is how do you maintain that mindset to lead showing those values and living to that purpose.
Tom Hardcastle:Yeah. So. Personally, I look to make sure that I do in what I say and do. So if you like leading by example in that sense, but also be very open to feedback and alternative views as part of that. And I encourage and welcome it and say, please do say if there are missteps or things that happen because yeah, any one of us is fallible so try and set that so that's a two way thing. And then to an earlier theme, a lot of it for me is actually about empowerment and nurturing or supporting or creating the environment or just getting out the way so that people can be the best that they can be and can absorb the values and the culture and the way of working that works best for them. We have colleagues that come from corporate background to something here, which is quite different. Others that are budding entrepreneurs have started/run businesses and moved here. We have recruited those people because of what we've seen and the promise that's there, what we want to do is just help that to nurture and flourish. So often I find my role is to just support, spur on, be there to challenge or to help, to frame where it's useful and then, and say at other times, just get out the way and let them be the best that they they can. So what try and do is foster that responsibility that everyone has to uphold the values that it's not up to a few leaders to demonstrate, share the way that it's a shared responsibility. And as I say that there is this shared feedback for both what is good and at times, if there are things that need to be challenged or they don't appear values aligned, then they should be called out as well.
Yiuwin Tsang:A big thank you to Tom Hardcastle for sharing his insights and experience on how innovation in the insurance sector and beyond can create good in the world. Thank you for joining us for this week's Beautiful Business podcast. Beautiful business is a community for leaders who believe there's a better way to do business. Join us next time for more interesting discussions on how businesses can bring about change, helping communities, building a fair society, and safeguarding the planet. You can also join in the discussion@www.beautifulbusiness.uk. Tom, I'm really conscious of the time and it's my own fault for being late on. Are you alright to do this last bit or yeah. I'm I'm alright. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a half pass and I just need to wrap a few minutes before learn if that's okay. Yeah, a hundred percent. Okay. Let's, let's move on to the third part, which is innovation to meet unmet needs. And I know that this is like, you know, really a big thing for you as well. So, so 90 creates value for us clients in the insurance space through innovation. What is exactly you given, given, given the industry's, you know, it's perceived as so risk averse how, how is it that you approach such a market you know, in the innovation space and, and, and create what is ultimately you a commercially viable proposition? What's your approach there? How how'd you go about, you know, taking innovation to this. So we have three parts to what we do as 19 clients engage with one or more of those. So we do support on ideas to market. So new ideas, new propositions, and we have a methodology framework which supports that. And we can deliver that through to traditional consulting model, where we will help to accelerate that journey for them with a particular idea or, and increasingly we're going down this space. We can partner with them more from a venture build perspective where we help them deliver their ideas, or the partners may be involved. But we also take a share in that idea. So ultimately back to nineties purpose and realizing profits for the future, we can realize some of that now through consulting fees and traditional consulting, but we can also realize it's at future times, if we choose to divest in new propositions that we've helped to take to market. So that's the ideas part of our business. Oh, that's. We have a capabilities part, which is about these structures to innovate. So these are things like innovation, funds, innovation, governance how to incentivize for innovation and how to include them in objective. So these are all operating model related pieces, but it's really about making sure innovation has a space within their business models and operating models and different ways that they can do that. And then the third part, and it's the piece that I particularly champion within 90 is actually the energy and, and, and skills to innovate. So this is all of our training offering, where we look to equip insurers, their colleague base to, to innovate whether that's at the practitioner level, where they're running projects and propositions, whether it's leading for innovation and sponsoring, or whether it's just everyday innovation, where people through continuous improvement can just think about in their best place to do it, their roles, and what are those incremental things that they could do. So we provide tools, frameworks. And encourage the mindsets to innovate. And so those three things we, we offer and look to make innovation accessible and practical to the partners we work with rather than a buzzword with no kind of practical application behind it. I think, I think that's that's and you hit the nail on the head. There is, is, is, you know, innovation can be so kind of, you know, ethereal, you know, and, and, and, and intangible. And it's it's, you know, how do you do that? And, and those three. Spaces, I suppose, kind of a cover in many senses, there's that whole piece around, you know, the ideas part of it. And, and, and, and I suppose you, the team and 90, you know, a key part of that kind of ideas on that creative process, I suppose the other part is I guess kind of enabling, you know, the, the operational safeguarding of innovation and, and, and making a lot of that I imagine is protecting, you know, the, the, the, the investment that goes into innovation, making sure that there's, they see the value in that investment and, and how they protect that operation. And then that last bit around, I guess, that empowerment piece and around, you know, facilitating and enabling teams to kind of, you know, drive, drive, drive of innovation. So that, that makes a huge, that makes a huge amount of sense and very interesting as well, that you've taken that. The the investment part as well. That's that's, that's really interesting. I suppose that, that whole kind of like future part, that future value that kind of almost are kind of future there's also, I suppose, a demonstration of your own investment of time, effort, energy, and belief in the project. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. We are very deliberate in using the word partner. So we look to partner with whoever we work with across any of those aspects as equals and I don't, I don't think it's coming from a pride or ego place, but we're not a subservient consultancy that will just do whatever the masters bidding. We say, this is partnership of equals where we bring our strengths. You bring your strengths, let's see what we can develop together. As you were saying in that venture build space, there's no perhaps clearer demonstration of that than to say. Yeah, we will bring either our time effort, resource, whatever it might be to the table to match the, the client funding for that, but across all, all that we do, we, we feel that partner. Collaboration and co-creation, they're again, sound like buzzwords, but we look to live that out in the way that we interact and work. With those that we partner with with a view that we can build deep relationships, and yet we can help them to innovate, which is yeah, just doing stuff better than it's done before. And unlocking that latent talent that often exist in organizations we've chosen insurance, but I'm sure could point to other sectors as well. There's potential there amongst the colleagues in those organizations and we are just there to help unlock it and create the best environment for them to, to flourish. Yeah, indeed. Sure. You work with organizations or teams where, you know, across the, the, the, their internal team, there are decades, if not centuries of experience and, you know, and learning and skills and opinions, and, and, and, and, and unlocking that, as you say, such a really lovely terms, unlocking it, you know really, really does kind of really does kind of add value to the whole kind of client process. And, and, and one, one of these things that we spoke about before this call Tom, was around innovating to meet unmet needs. And tell us a little bit more about, about this kind of idea this, this, this whole piece around unmet needs and, and, and how I suppose the 90 approach to this would be. Yeah, so some of the unmet needs are new markets or markets in this case, an insurance that. Either don't exist or are not yet mature. So cyber insurance is a great example of something that didn't really exist a decade ago. And now that's quite a mature market, both particularly a corporate level, but also for individuals, one of the projects, the teams working on the moments is around the metaverse and actually, what are the risks that you know, parallel universes create and, and what are actually the risks and themes either from a kind of personal, you know, self guarding and protection perspective or from a fraud perspective or whatever it might be. And actually looking at that now saying that this is not yet a mature, although fast maturing space, perhaps, but this could be a mature market in five years. And isn't currently, so we're talking about unmet needs caused by in this case. Technology others are in the environment or in the social perspective. As we see with climate change, the, the, the pace at which, you know, weather and climate is impacting whether it be in, in, in crops and food whether it be in, you know, flooding and homes, we can help to bring, you know, technology, new data, new partners to the table to see what opportunities they are there. So they are, if you like currently unmet needs for things that are rapidly going up people's priority list, whether individual homeowners or whether they are, you know, corporates, whatever situation. And then, as I mentioned earlier, there are also these unmet needs around in particular developing world. And in particular, those that perhaps don't have the privilege of a. Western style lifestyle. So things like refugees fleeing war from Afghanistan, Ukraine moving to another country and needing to have things, for example like the ability to have a deposit, to be able to move into a property. So is there an insurance product that could help support. Or to get into meaningful employment when they need X, Y, and Z in order to be able to do so. So those types of things that can actually help to give a step up to these people that have been displaced and have moved into a different environment. And the products and services that currently exist in those new countries don't actually meet their needs. So it's examples like that and the, the team's done a great job to actually talk about the great risks. It's very future oriented piece across those macro things. But then to drill it down into really practical things that are within reach and start to, to build those, build those things out. And I've just given a few examples. That's fantastic, Tom, it sounds like I came across a term years ago called horizon scanning, and it sounds like there's a bit of must be that involved, that whole kind of Fu future gazing, if you like. But the important part, I suppose, of your process is how you bring that into, as you say, you know, some, something is a bit more tangible, a bit more real in many senses. And one of, I guess, one of the biggest challenges things like, like the environment, for example, you people talk about the melting ice caps and I'm talking from a, you know, a shed where it's like 28 degrees at the minute. And, and, and, and, and, and it's so far. That it doesn't feel almost doesn't feel real. Whereas I suppose the, the, the, the, the, the challenge you have, and it sounds like the team are so good at doing is around understanding well, on the horizon of these challenges, they're unmet at the moment, but the further, the, the outside of our kind of like a sphere of concern, I think it's called, but it's, it's how we start bringing that back through. And there must be a logical chain almost isn't there of, of, of things that kind of bring back through and, and right. The way through to, I imagine, you know, something like you know, chronic, like a school places in certain parts of the country that, that feel, you know, that you felt like, you know, people kind of experienced that straight away, but it, it, you can almost see how something. Lack of school, places will be affected by, you know, dispo a movement of different communities because of different things that are happening rising sea levels, for example, or war or whatever might be that's displacing called communities that will affect us in real terms. But it's understanding how yeah. Their connections are made, I suppose. And that's that, that I suppose is the, the crux of this innovation. No, exactly, exactly. So we, we use horizons and we, we Nick this from McKinsey, we talk about these horizons of iteration, horizon, three, being that, you know, new markets out to the future horizons, two being adjacent products or services or distribution to what's there today and horizon one being that continuous improvement, incremental stuff. What we're talking about here is that horizon three new market or not yet mature market, but what we then try and do that's the right to left is then ladder up from the left to right, to say, what is near at hand or in the kickback of insurers and other risk providers that can start to move towards that. And it's a great way to get people's momentum and engagement on this. So rather you mean a distant, theoretical thing over there. Can start a lot of things up and say, actually, this is the journey that we could go on to get to solve that ultimate issue and that, and I suppose that, that mindset and that approach more importantly, that that feels like it's industry agnostic. It feels like it's something that you could apply, you know, if you were working in, in, in insurance and risk, if you are working in, in, in tech and development in community space, in design space or whatever it might be. But, but that whole process of, you know, as you say, kind of that horizon scan, but then bringing it back, finding where those links are, you know, finding out where the interdependencies might be and understanding that it feels to me like it's market and almost kind of sector agnostic, that approach of of, of, of it feels like a like a very deliberate innovation. It feels like very kind of targeted. It feels very kind of specific and, and, and, and, and, and, and logical. Yeah, no, you you're. Right. You know, a lot of method and tools that we have at. Macro level, they are very pragmatic, you know, the best of lean design, thinking, agile, et cetera, but we just do it in a very practical way. We have focused on insurance and made that our specialism because it's the background of myself and a number of other colleagues always better to, to go niche and go wide when you are growing, as we've been told through our business school and other interventions. And so we are making a name for ourselves, you know, at that crux of innovation in insurance. But you know, who knows over time where 90 might grow to in the ambitions that, that we've got, that we can apply those to, to, to other sectors as well. At the moment we see, you know, we talked about unmet needs that the, the industry has an unmet need, that we are looking to help to plug the gap on. And, and so that's working well for us. At the moment, increasing the partnerships though that we are bringing to the table, particularly in the venture build. Are, you know, manufacturers, distributors, others that aren't necessarily in that insurance and risk space only. So you can see another buzzword, but that ecosystem developing to help support against particular opportunities. But we've just anchored ourselves in that insurance and risk space to, if you like begin, begin, that makes a huge amount of sense. And, and, and there's lot, you know, there's, there's lots and lots of skills of thought around and the importance to go niche and build up, build up from there. Tom, I think, I think we can wrap up there and, and give you like nine minutes before your next one. Really enjoyed. That really looks really good. Thank you. Nice, nice, nice flow felt it really did feel like a, you know, conversation. Yeah, definitely. I, I, I will, yeah. I'll, I'll leave you to it. If you could send me a link to, to this video. I will, as soon as it comes through, I'll forward that on that's super. And then, yeah, we'll, we'll keep you posted on when it gets, when it gets published and, and so on and so forth. So, so just, yeah, thank you very much. Really, really appreciate your time. Tom is a senior partner at a social enterprise, Ninety who are innovation experts in the insurance sector. Their clients include Bupa direct line, Generali Lloyds and Zurich. 90% of their distributable profits go to charity. Tom has a strong background in financial services, fulfilling strategy, change operational and PNL roles as well as playing a leading role in the transformation of co-op insurance. As part of the executive. team He holds a masters from the university of St. Andrews and an MBA from Manchester business school. Ninety believe insurance is fundamentally a force for social good. They also believe in the power of innovation and customer centred Change. Their vision is to help insurers innovate and thrive so that they are well equipped to serve and stabilise a fast changing world. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the beautiful business podcast and a big thank you to Tom Hardcastle for sharing his insights and experience on how innovation in the insurance sector and beyond can create good in the world.